George Soros: Facebook and Google are a menace to society
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
"[Google and Facebook] claim that they are merely distributing information, but the fact that they are near monopoly distributors make them in to public utilities - and should subject them to more stringent regulations aimed at preserving competition, innovation and fair and open universal access."
George Soros always seems to be selling something, so hearing the billionaire cry foul gives me pause.
I don't disagree with the stated ambition – "preserved competition, innovation and fair and open universal access", but I'm hesitant to join the rallying cry for heavy handed regulation at this point. These always seem to come down on other companies that don't have the resources to manage the regulations and create an even more protectionist environment.
What are the unintended consequences of these regulations? We've all benefited from the work that Google and Facebook have open sourced (definitely pushed outside innovation forward), and many incredible businesses and entrepreneurs have found footing on the solid platforms of each.
I don't know. I imagine that if we view these companies on a longer time frame, we'll see that they end up folding in on themselves like every other company – just maybe a generation or two later.
It's never clear to me what people even mean by this - it seems like a fashionable phrase to throw around. So I second your question - what practically speaking would happen under this scenario? I'd prefer to hear the people advocating it be explicit about what they want and why.
FWIW, in my perfect imaginary world, Google Search would work as it had worked few years ago (back when it had less ads), while social networks like Facebook would be forced to interoperate through some shared protocols. But then again, my vision of the perfect Internet involves significantly reducing control the publishing parties have - that is, those parties should publish content and services, not dictate the way I should consume said content and services. I should be perfectly free to render any site any way I like, including not rendering it at all, but navigating through my own (or third party) software.
It'd allow you to basically build your own Facebook app, migrate meaningfully to another service and build other services that meaningfully integrate with Facebook... and effectively turn FB/Twitter into public utilies and enable real competition to Google to appear by allowing users to share key data such as which result they clicked on in response to which query.
I think this strikes at the heart of my contempt for heavy handed approach to regulation.
I kinda want to take that back and say we shouldn’t be having this conversation at all. This narrative that everything needs to be regulated and the Internet is a something makes me more worried that we’ll be required to do things as much as we’ll be protected in doing other things.
E.g. a relationship between the government and Facebook in any fashion pushes us closer to allowing Facebook as some form of shared trust - perhaps making it an eligible Voting ID. We get to a point where it becomes more hassle than it’s worth, benefiting the Gov and FB, but not really benefiting the end user.
Maybe that’s the real Net-Neutrality: keeping a hands-off relationship between how I consume information and the regulation of such.
Yes, I feel like the regulatory movement is underway, and the narrative is beginning to brew. And, I think we’re having someone else’s conversation.
If you live in a major city in the US or Europe, your utilities almost certainly "just work," and this narrative is pure ideological bullshit based in fantasy.
Have you ever lived anywhere where utilities are not state-regulated? Are you comparing them to that experience?
You don't have to--you can just compare something that should be a utility (Comcast) with something that is (your power company). Hey, look! Turns out those government regulations help.
I actually prefer they not be regulated as public utilities because at least this way you have some measure of opting out of having information collected about you.
I don’t know about the unintended consequences, but when George Soros comes out in public he is always pushing an agenda. So perhaps the question should be, what are the intended consequences?
Does Soros want governments to regulate these companies for economic reasons, or is it a power grab for control of the flow of information?
These companies have painted a huge target on their back by amassing so much data. There are many powerful organizations that would like access to that data.
It's not about access to the data, but rather about controlling the flow of information. The rise of social media and Google represents a shift of power away from traditional media (which Soros and his allies have a relatively higher degree of influence over) and to .. well, something else (I'm going going to pretend it's "the people", and it's not "the russians", either).
I guess from Soros point of view the underlying issue is that the social media amplify outrage driving up lobbying costs.
(Yes, this does have consequences down to the individual developer level)
I thought US monopoly laws were more about dealing with unfair profiteering off customers?
Or do I not know that Google’s advertising rates are regulated by monopoly laws?
This finally seems to be starting to shift.
> What monopoly regulation would apply to a dominant market position delivering value at no cost to the user
Look at what is happening to Google in the EU.
“Social media companies deceive their users by manipulating their attention and directing it towards their own commercial purposes. They deliberately engineer addiction to the services they provide. This can be very harmful, particularly for adolescents. There is a similarity between internet platforms and gambling companies.”
Good points to raise, but as a former Googler, I’m a bit surprised how he does not distinguish between Google and FB at all. Are we all Google addicted then? Remember Google’s main business, Search, is still about getting you away from Google as quick as possible.
It used to be. But that was a while ago. Most of the Google search results today for popular topics lead to Google properties or are ads. As I've pointed out for years, when search works right, the search engine doesn't make any money. Page and Brin made that point in the original Google paper.
Google actually has some legit products which are actually the most relevant search results for some queries.
If those are the only things you see at the top you're not really looking for anything particularly interesting.
This does not match my experience. Can you give some examples? "are ads" - do you mean AdWords, or websites in the search results that are actually ads?
As a single data point, I just did a Google search for [music subscription services]. First result (for me) is Wikipedia, followed by several comparisons, Spotify on 5th place, and Google Music not ranking in the top 10. Looks good to me.
On the original page, the only other visible links are an ad for Amazon Music, and (mostly below-the-fold) "best music streaming services" from Consumer Reports.
Google is trying to get you to come back soon while FB is stay and never leave.
Pretty sure virtually every website on the internet is talking to Google one way or another. So it doesn't really matter whether you're on Google or not, does it?
Facebook knows us by our social connections. We don't have to actually use it for that. As long as your browser's privacy add-ons disable Facebook's widgets (the like-button) it probably can't track your browsing habits though.
Google's main business is advertising, through Search. To do this, they have to keep you coming back to Google and at the same time know everything about you to give you the most relevant ads. This is done by tailoring the search results to you, which is usually good, but can still create a "bubble" because I'll usually end up seeing articles that agree with my points of view without intending to do so.
That's one perspective. Another is that it's about taking you were google wants as quickly as possible.
If Google sends you to a site with embedded adwords and analytics in what sense are you “away” from Google?
They've been around in various forms since at least as early as 2006[0]
[0] https://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2006/07/google-onebox-resu...
<<Soros warned of an “even more alarming prospect” on the horizon if data-rich internet companies such as Facebook and Google paired their corporate surveillance systems with state-sponsored surveillance – a trend that’s already emerging in places such as the Philippines.
“This may well result in a web of totalitarian control the likes of which not even Aldous Huxley or George Orwell could have imagined,” he said.>>
I'm definitely concerned by the surveillance state that's developing, but I also believe that our flag is significantly less red than both the Nazi and Soviet flags, both literally and figuratively. I think it's important that we're wary of slippages in freedoms of citizens without resorting to hyperbole and comparing the current situation to oppressive regimes which murdered so many millions of their own citizens definitely feels hyperbolic.
The danger here is that we might be lulling ourselves in a complacent state "it can't happen to us", because of our values, democracy, political system, etc. while at the same time putting in place massive infrastructure ripe for totalitarian abuse.
At a moment's notice, the situation can transition radically with the monsters lurking in the shadows taking full control of an unstoppable surveillance machine, indeed of a capacity not even Orwell could imagine - now capable of autonomous decision and self enforcement for absolute compliance. The trigger could be something as banale as a military conflict - our capacity to chose freedom as opposed to complete physical security has steadily gotten worse. Once in place totalitarian rule is strongly self enforcing and very very hard to shake, it corrodes all social cohesion and institutions, turning individuals into survival or full denial mode.
this is the perfect chance to plug one of my favorite books, sinclair lewis' "it can't happen here."
the content is predictable, but the implementation of the idea is fantastically detailed and-- in the wake of the US' current political situation-- outrageously predictive for being written decades ago.
Timothy Snyder (historian of Eastern Europe) wrote a book about the conditions needed to happen to get murders in millions. It's called Bloodlands - Europe between Hitler and Stalin, and I highly recommend it, it's cured me of many misconceptions about Holocaust and WW2 (and I thought I know it pretty good, I'm interested in history and I'm Polish - WW2 is still a big subject here).
It doesn't only speak about Holocaust, it showcases several genocides that happened just before and during WW2 in eastern Europe, and states a thesis, that the only required condition is destruction of state institutions. Ideologies, cultures, stereotypes are secondary. Some of the most antisemitist states in WW2 had lots of Jews surviving German occupation (see France), some of the least antisemitic countries had almost all of their Jews killed (see Netherlands). It mostly depended on how Germans dealt with the institutions of state when they occupied particular country.
Even Germany started murdering on a really big scale only when it got access to lands with no law and no state institutions (because they destroyed them). And most of the murders took place not in death camps (which were BTW excluded from German law), but on-site, in otusands of villages and town, by German police/army/SS, or local guerilla fighters, bandits, marauders, paramilitary groups, just local people, or a mix of these.
As a personal note, I'm quite scared by everything that happens in Europe, and especially in Poland for last few years. There's nationalist renaissance going on, and some previously marginalized views become mainstream, the state anti-minority propaganda is just unbearable (basically ~all Muslims are terrorists, all leftist want to flood us with them because that'll somehow make us more like USSR and as we know it's the leftists' goal, but we have Catholic Church and government that will defend us). Somehow feminists and LGBT are in the conspiracy too. People believe in all that crap to various degrees, but it's mainstream. You are ridiculed if you don't.
Literal neonazis are still marginal (well, it's Poland, duh), but nationalism is fashionable suddenly, and even this week I've heard 2 old ladies in mall talking about the Muslims that want to kill us and the leftists that want them in so that Poland is communist again.
It's surreal, and it only took 3 years. And we barely have any minorities in the first place. How much easier it would be in a country where there are real problems with minorities?
--
Being Polish myself, I'd like to offer my own view on some of your statements, without detracting from the main point.
> all Muslims are terrorists (...) It's surreal, and it only took 3 years.
That one has been brewing for a loooong time, pretty much ever since 9/11, and we can thank Western media for that. It's a hot topic only now, because it ties into EU's immigration crisis. The immigrants involved come from Muslim countries, so people went all "oh, so you want us to welcome terrorists now?".
> Somehow feminists and LGBT are in the conspiracy too.
They kind of had it coming, though :). People are not blind to the utter craziness of the extreme fringes of feminist movements in the US (which get all the media attention); all that "social justice warriors" mess was observable through social media, and so I've noticed years ago that people locally were starting to polarize about feminism too. It's not about women rights as much the combination of viewing things through traditional (catholic) values + conflating all feminism with crazy American SJWs. But I guess, as it is today and with current governance, it all got bundled together under "anti-Polish, pro-Union-of-Socialistic-European-Republics, crazy lefties".
--
All in all, you make a solid point on just how quickly things can flip around. The change may be brewing for a long time, but when it happens, it's pretty swift.
I don't think that France would qualify as one of the most antisemitist state of WW 2. Since Dreyfus affair at the beginning of the XXth century, antisemitism was less and less prevalent. But I agree that having a unoccupied zone for most of the war and keeping most state institutions helped saving most of the Jews living in France before the war.
First of all, you might want to distinguish between patriotism and nationalism (understood as a chauvinist national cult). The two are quite different.
Second, the period of 1990-2008 is kind of a twilight zone of history. I remember how, following the fall of the Berlin wall, the end of history was an idea that excited people. Come 2008, history has returned and with force. The recession exposed the geopolitical seismic faults stretching and fracturing the world. Capital was found to have a nationality after all. CEE resides on a very particular geopolitical fault line in Europe with its own unique geopolitical, economic, and security concerns and challenges, often at odds with the interests of countries like Germany and Russia (again, historically the case). For many of us, this return of history is something quite new, many of us having spent most of our lives in that supposed post-historic twilight zone.
Third, it's in poor taste to conflate opposition to taking in migrants with bigotry. Sure, some people are bigoted or simply ignorant. They do exist. However, that's not what is driving the essential opposition to the taking in migrants. The migrant crisis has been an extraordinary cluster fuck of epic proportions. Also, consider that: the majority of migrants are not Syrians or people from war-torn regions; that the West (including the US, largely at fault for destabilizing the regimes that kept militant Islam in check; many of them countries with colonial pasts in those countries) failed to take in the numbers they could; the wealthy Saudis, with ties to the US, failed to take significant numbers in; the homogeneity of CEE countries post-WWII and the social problems of taking in migrants of radically different culture would cause for both parties; the on-the-ground support, financial and otherwise, of Poles in Syria; the ~1 million Ukrainians Poland took in from war-torn Ukraine while countries like Germany did not. I could continue. The point is that this is a complex issue and the media has been vicious in its suppression of many important facts.
Fourth, Western leftists have no qualms trying to strong arm CEE countries into accepting abortion, gay marriage, transgenderism, etc (abortion was once completely legal under communism). They have no problem (through a network of foreign-sponsored NGOs, foreign-owned media, foreign "aid" programs, etc) insinuating these views and attacking those who oppose them with the usual accusations of fascism, misogyny, bigotry, and so on. I don't want to get into a debate about these issues here. I only wish to illustrate the aggressive, paternalistic, and presumptuous attempts to foist these ideological positions onto these societies with the help of wealthy financiers (such as Soros). Don't forget: most migrants come from societies where legal inventions like gay marriage not only doesn't exist, but gay relations are punishable.
Beyond that, I wouldn't overstate the transformation you believe was orchestrated by the current government. The state media in Poland changes hands every time the gov't changes and it is a drop in the bucket compared to the world of corporate media which backs the opposition parties regardless of which gov't happens to be in power. Many voted for the current gov't out of exasperation with the previous gov't and its allies. Also, the idea that you are ridiculed for criticizing the current gov't is silly. There is a deluge of criticism of the current gov't, from media outlets to cabaret satire. You are not unique in your perspective and your perspective resides very neatly in the narrative that's been spun by the opposition, its media backers, and affiliated parties. Even some high-ranking clergy in the Church have expressed criticism. Then there's the internet. Cities tend to have more left-leaning tendencies than rural areas. I have come across critics everywhere. I simply cannot fathom what small Polish island you live on where what you hold is remotely true.
That was just an example of how widespread this attitude got recently. I've spoken to many people, including my (mostly liberal till recently) family, and the sentiment is similar.
> you might want to distinguish between patriotism and nationalism
I do distinguish them, and I consider myself a "positivist patriot", as opposed to "romantic nationalist" - which is a much more common attitude in Poland.
Patriotism becomes nationalism when people start to exclude others. It's already widespread - see "Poland for Poles" on national holidays, anti-Ukrainian resentment, etc.
> often at odds with the interests of countries like Germany and Russia
historically Poland was allied with one part of Germany, and fighting the other part of it. Most of old Polish cities were settled basing on German law, often by Germanic settlers. We've had our wars, but we've had wars against all of our neighbors.
Currently Poland and Germany only benefit from the cooperation, and the differences are vastly overstated because of internal politics (PIS using anti-German sentiment to fight opposition basically).
> the ~1 million Ukrainians Poland took in from war-torn Ukraine
you know well it's bullshit. 99+% of them are economic migrants. I'm from Lublin. I have Ukrainians in my family. I've been to Kiev this year, and to Ukraine many times. Ukraine west of Dniepr is as war-torn as Poland was in 2004 (we had 2 wars going on, remember?).
> The point is that this is a complex issue
It's only issue because politicians made it one. Had we accepted a few tousand imigrants there would be no issue, just like there's no issue in most of EU countries that did just that. Including even Hungary recently :)
But it was very convenient for PIS to use imigrants as a card during last elections, so they did, fuck the consequences. So we had the campaign of xenophoby in media, and the effects are pretty bad. Poland had 2500 Indian students last year. In the whole world there's almost 500 000 of them abroad. Out of 25 violent incidents against Indian students abroad, 9 happened in Poland in last year.
Violent crimes against Muslim minority in Poland grew almost twice from 2015 to 2016.
These are still minor concerns, simply because there's so few immigrants here. But it will have to change, because of demography. And no, 500+ won't help, it's simpe math. Even if every women in child-bearing age had 1 more kid than now - because of a demographic hole from 90s - the number of kids born will drop to record low in next decade.
Ukrainians are already there, but it won't suffice.
> Western leftists have no qualms trying to strong arm CEE countries into accepting abortion, gay marriage, transgenderism, etc
If you consider these things leftist, then the remaining non-leftist countries are Poland, Russia, and Muslim republics. And with Russia I'm not so sure, it's much more libral on abortion.
It's not "western leftist", who don't want to ban abortion no matter the conditions. Over 60% of Poles want abortion to be allowed (depending on the circumstances). And it was HIGHER in 90s. The propaganda that is the most widespread is Church and conservatives, not the mythical leftists. And it's working.
> I simply cannot fathom what small Polish island you live on where what you hold is remotely true.
I'm living in Lublin, visiting my family in small village nearby, and for a few months now and then I live in Warsaw. I wouldn't call it "island", it's pretty good cross-section of a Polish society.
> most migrants come from societies where legal inventions like gay marriage not only doesn't exist, but gay relations are punishable
Yes, and? Most of them aren't religious. Most of religious Muslims aren't extremists.
It's funny how fragile self-image of western (and - in consequence - Polish) right-wing is. Our (western) culture is WINNING. Kids in Egypt and Saudi Arabia watch Real Madrid and Hollywood movies. We don't watch their movies nor their sports. They know who Lewandowski is and what Shakira wear, we don't know who their stars and celebrities are.
The assimilation is never easy, but it's inevitable. And the problems western Europe has are nothing new. "The troubles" in UK had much bigger cost in lives than all the Muslim terrorists. France and Spain had their terrorists in 80s and 90s, too.
Terrorism crisis is mostly a PR problem.
http://www.datagraver.com/thumbs/1300x1300r/2017-05/ter-we-i...
I am not Polish or anything close to it, but I would imagine that most Poles would have a hard time getting excited about this. "Our culture is dying, but it's OK because we can bring in some third-worlders to keep the population numbers up!" does not exactly inspire jubilance.
Thinking about these two (fertility problems and anti-immigration sentiment) juxtaposed makes me wonder if they're connected. As an American, would I be as up-in-arms as I am about illegal immigration if I felt part of a strong, successful, viable culture that was by and for me? Probably not.
One other thing: that Saudi Arabian kids know who Shakira is is not a sign that Western culture is winning---at least, not the good parts. The parts I care about are things like Christianity, the rule of law, and, candidly, people who look like me. I feel like sort of a provocateur writing this, but it would have been an entirely unremarkable statement two hundred years ago---and I suspect the Poles are channeling something like it. WTF do they care about Shakira?
you mean has been developed and deployed and actively in use for over a decade, and is continually expanding even now?
you can have oppression without murder, or even without the threat of violence... surveillance is a subtle tyrant, but don't mistake that for meaning that it is any less destructive.
Uuuuum...off the top of my head with no investigation at all:
If I search for anything that could plausibly involve a video, I get a string of youtube links at the top of my google search.
Google favors AMP links over sending me to the actual website.
I'm sure I could come up with more, given half a second. Ever been directed to bing maps from google, for example?
for me what Soros and many politicians have in common is they see two very powerful people enabling systems they don't hold sway over. Soros and his type with their money don't have it and politicians cannot control the message.
so both groups throw their wealth, influence, and power, behind efforts to convince people that entities like google and facebook are a threat to the people where they really are a threat to the old power brokers that are loathe to give them up.
it wasn't too long ago they controlled the message, either directly or through sycophants in the media. the internet through companies like google and facebook ended that control and hence constitute a threat
Most people don't understand Google or Facebook (or even the internet as a generalized service) so saying advertisements are manipulating people in regards to that pushes some beyond the threshold of comfort. It's not really the one thing that causes an issue for them, but the whole stack of other things behind it that eventually causes them to focus on a singular point that's easiest for them to complain about. Nobody wants to complain about their personal lack of knowledge, but a big bad unknown scary thing is easy to rally against.
I suggest instead of seeing it ironically, see it as Soros being blinded by his biases, like we all are. Given that, it would be better to say "yes, this, AND it's also similar to XYZ", rather than appearing to dismiss what I think are very accurate views (on the danger of FB/attention merchanting).
Google Analytics.
On virtually every website, tracking everybody, all the time. Google is trying to get as much data about us as they can, and if you are an ex-Googler, you are pretty blue-eyed.
Away to a place that will show more Google ads.
Somehow Google has managed to capture all of the profit from YouTube with none of the political/brand consequences by keeping the brand separate. It's working in the mass media and shockingly it's also somehow working in the minds of tech workers. Everyone talks about Facebook and Twitter but I rarely hear about YouTube even though I suspect they are way more influential with younger crowds.
Disclaimer: I use YouTube with uBlock, so I never have to see unskippable ads. In my opinion, this is the only way to use YouTube (and the only way which makes listening to playlists feasible); if this possibility ever goes away, I'll likely stop using YouTube.
edit: a sibling comment mentioned autoplay. Autoplay is indeed one of YouTube's spammy features, and I wish it went away.
With Facebook, it's almost constant spam about stuff I'm not interested in. People -- my contacts! -- share all kinds of crap. And Twitter is even worse, with lots of spam and with ads I constantly need to remind Twitter I don't want to see.
As a googler, you don't even know that your own company provides analytic tools for websites, as well as personalized integrated search for websites? ads on third party websites? webmaster tools? script cdn? font hosting? AMP cache ? ...
getting out of "google.com" doesn't mean that the user stops being tracked by google.
The main narrative that Soros promotes is "nationalism is racism" and the corralary "strong states are fascist". This is why he is unpopular with nationalist governments in Eastern Europe for example that reject EU immigration rules and why he attempts to undermine those government's legitimacy in Hungary for example. He can pay for media campaigns to support his positions and he can exert influence financially over media networks, but he can't control the masses on social media which thwart his vision.
Also, you're contradiction yourself, because if Soros is all about starting populist movements, and Facebook and Google enable that, they would be his closest allies.
> The main narrative that Soros promotes is "nationalism is racism" and the corralary "strong states are fascist".
Did you catch the part about him being a Jew who survived Nazi-occupied Hungary?
There's a fallacy here involving your assumption that all populist movement follow the same agenda.
If they don't, they're clearly not allies, but rivals.
Not that I'm agreeing with the OP, but their point is subtler: Soros has his own tools for enabling whatever populist movements he wants to start. Shutting down Facebook's/Google's ability to empower populist movements denies others that same power, so it's of benefit to him (by letting him alone have that power).
The internet has new forms of influencing power that the previous media did not have. What he warns against is the centralisation of those powers in the hands of a few players, and the possibility of these players working together with totalitarian governments to create a dystopian surveillance state (personally, what I am even more freaked out about is the idea of a decentralised totalitarian surveillance state - there was a recent Wired article on how China is experimenting with this).
The claim that Soros has a "strong states are fascist"-rhetoric does not make much sense either. This is what he actually says in the article:
> “The internet monopolies have neither the will nor the inclination to protect society against the consequences of their actions. That turns them into a menace and it falls to the regulatory authorities to protect society against them,”
There are no business incentives for Facebook and Google to clean up their act, so he explicitly calls for more regulation. How is that not asking for a strong government? Of course, that's not what GP meant with "strong states". His "strong states are fascist" claim is that weird kind of self-denial that you typically see with people defending fascist governmental actions, but not wanting to be called fascist.
It typically plays out like this: person A argues that "government X is fascist, because A, B and C", where A, B and C are typically human rights violations carried out by X. Then person B, who is pro-X, reasons "But A, B and C are ways for our state to be strong! X is not fascist, you are just against strong states!" No, person A isn't against strong states. Person B just has ridiculous definitions of what a strong state is. The governments of the Nordic countries enforce a ton of regulation on companies within it. I would consider that a strong government. Few would call it fascist. Person B would probably call it weak.
In my experience every populist movement can be traced to a single charismatic leader with a dictatorial streak who promises the moon and the sky to the hapless masses. I am and forever will be thoroughly unimpressed with any populist movement. It will always end badly.
I guess you think of the single leader as the "centralised" focal point of a populist movement. I agree, but it's not what the word centralised refer sto. Instead, it refers to the media being centralised or not.
Any leader needs a platform to broadcast their message from. Centralised media have (some) selective power over the narrative, and therefore the role of gatekeepers or enablers (like when controversial figures get disproportionate attention because it causes more clicks - see also [0][1]).
The decentralisation aspect of the internet undermines that, which in itself is value-neutral. This is not something that never happened before; the printing press allowed Luther to bypass the gatekeeping powers of the Catholic Church[2]. As I mentioned elsewhere, this lead to massive social upheaval ending in the Thirty Year's War, so it's not all positive (worth noting is that Luther's biggest issue was with the so-called "indulgences", which allowed people to buy off their sins[3][4]. How is that for unfair wealth inequality?)
The point is that the printing press meant that a lot more voices could be heard by a lot more people. The Internet takes that to the next level. A lot more of those "single charismatic leaders" suddenly have a potential audience (this might explain why I feel disdain for most YouTubers: a lot of them want an audience for the sake of having an audience, without having a story to tell).
The Internet decentralises populism because it decentralises all communication. Clay Shirky (from whom I stole the printing press example) has written a lot on this[5].
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34LGPIXvU5M
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-five_Theses
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indulgence
[5] https://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_...
I would say populous movements usually pre-date their charismatic leaders. Trump supporters aren't anti- immigration because of Trump, rather it was by embracing an existing populous anti-immigrant mentality that he achieved power.
The way an "enlightened" Frenchman or Italian might view Turkey is very, very different from how a Bulgarian (such as myself) or Serb would view them. As to who's more "correct" in their view, well - that's a whole different subject.
These are complex issues and calling Hungary a bunch of racist twats is exactly the same as what Hungarians are doing to "refugees", who, interestingly enough, are disproportionately young men, in good physical condition, running away from countries that are not Syria or otherwise in a state of war. Some of the photographs I've seen of the border crossing show a distinct and very noticeable lack of women and children. And that in itself is also a very interesting subject we could debate for hours.
and you trust those photos?
There's also pictures of groups of boat refugees that show a large imbalance, which is true of those using that mode of transport, who often leave women and children to follow on once they've found a place because of the extreme danger of the route (which, yes, might evidence some degree of non-progressive concept of gender roles, but that's not the issue being raised.)
Isn't George Soros also 'dismantling democracy' by influencing elections in places he is not a citizen of?
In other words, democracy is a tool, not an end in itself.
No, he isn't. If someone from the outside is influencing the system to preserve key characteristics it has, they aren't subverting the process.
No one thinks foreign election observers sent to oversee contested elections are the heralds of the end of democracy; quite the opposite.
So the example is, depending on how you look at it, either irrelevant or diametrically opposed to the point you offer it to support.
Hence we can distinguish between interventions aimed at subverting the democratic process and interventions based upon reinforcing them.
Whether or not Soros' interventions are enabling democracy or subverting them is a separate debate. My statement is just to show that the premise that 'any' interference is anti-democratic is demonstrably false.
Uh.. he can pay for media campaigns on Facebook too, just like many others are doing it with the "fake news".
Which, even if Facebook decides to forgo profits in favor of "good", doesn't preclude a government passing a law that "All social media sites much prefer regime news stories over anything else."
There’s even satire material which I find hilarious where he’s blamed for the cold weather and stuff like that.
I think you are falling into the fairly common "George Soros is evil" narrative and it causing you not to listen to what Soros actually is saying in this particular case.
Soros actually is focusing on three well established points that others also regularly make - these are quotes from the article:
(1) “This is particularly nefarious because social media companies influence how people think and behave without them even being aware of it. This has far-reaching adverse consequences on the functioning of democracy, particularly on the integrity of elections.”
(2) In addition to skewing democracy, social media companies “deceive their users by manipulating their attention and directing it towards their own commercial purposes” and “deliberately engineer addiction to the services they provide”. The latter, he said, “can be very harmful, particularly for adolescents”.
(3) Soros warned of an “even more alarming prospect” on the horizon if data-rich internet companies such as Facebook and Google paired their corporate surveillance systems with state-sponsored surveillance – a trend that’s already emerging in places such as the Philippines.
He isn't talking at all about social movements or populism on Facebook or Google, not at all. Remember that those are often outside of those platforms generally these days, such as Telegram in Iran or Twitter.
I feel like your comment is bringing in an axe to grind because of other grievances with Soros, rather than dealing with what he is actually saying in this particular article.
At least for the first two points, Soros does the same thing:
1) George Soros also tries to manipulate how the public thinks and feels with his media campaigns
2) he manipulates people’s attention to focus on his political interests
Not saying either are particularly in the right for doing these things but it’s a little funny that this is so alarming for him, a major political donor and influencer
I guess this is sort of a weird article, just saying what others have said but this time repeating it because the source, Soros, is unique and for some has more authority because is very wealthy. Basically nothing is new in the criticisms.
We strive for a higher level of discourse at HN.
The insidious thing is that sufficient storage + innocous tech can be transformed into surveillance... when everything's aggregated.
Right, but it seems then you're saying that surveillance is more of an intention than it is a set of technologies. Some technologies make those intentions easier to act upon certainly, but the concept of "surveillance" needs to be defined better so that we can recognize what specifically makes it sinister.
FWIW, I have convinced myself that ubiquitous surveillance is pretty much inevitable as a side-effect to automation of infrastructure, so the question is how to manage it (rather than whether.) Right now we are seeing a split between "Morlocks" and "Eloi" where there is a huge gap between the understanding of the folks working at these AI-developing super-silos and the understanding of Joe and Jane User on the street.
Have you ever heard the old bit about how “a lie is best hidden between two truths”? I think a lot of people steer clear of truth from someone they don’t trust because they know what the next thing will be.
It’s counter to another saying, “if a thief tells you murder is bad, does that make him wrong?” But life is complicated.
Facebook is really a perfect tool for people like Soros. You can promote whatever news or opinion you want if you have the money, targeting whichever group you want.
Anyone with a big enough bank account can take advantage of this centralized platform to influence people on a vast scale.
No, i think all those mentioned did follow self determination, ultimately.
But now the people who championed it no longer denounce imperialism but instead promote a new imperialism, globalization.
The ADL complains that any statement that Jews contribute to anti-Semitic feelings, is anti-Semitic. This is also a tactic that right-wing Israeli politicians use to deflect criticism.
Do you mean the ADL? Citation? Because googling "ADL Soros" finds lots of examples of the ADL condemning attacks on Soros as anti-Semitic, but nothing I can find credibly sourced of them condemning Soros as anti-Semitic.
I have seen a reversal on people's attitude on Soros in Eastern Europe. Initially he was seen as a benefactor, just someone wanting to bring openness and promote democracy to various parts of the world.
Eventually people realized he brings his own version / vision of "openness" and the end goals of his NGOs and movements do not necessarily align with the interests of the country they operate it. Not that the interests of the local government align or are beneficial to the local populace, either but that doesn't automatically make his influence a positive thing either. (The enemy of my enemy is not automatically my friend, I might just have 2 enemies now).
Nowadays with much of Eastern Europe having pretty decent democratic societies (lots of problems still and the Russian influence has grown a lot lately) his ideas aren't seen as a pure "positive" contribution but more like a variation with its own pros and cons of the systems already in place.
Personally (like I said elsewhere in the thread) I own much of my professional life to one of his foundations and as such in my book he is a hero and a person that had a huge positive contribution on my life.
Of course, Soros is not alone in this regard, though he is an important figure. Piketty has called CEE "foreign-owned countries" given the extremely outsized control of the wealth and resources of these countries by Western companies (consider that 80% of the media in Poland are owned by foreign companies, mostly German). When foreign companies dominate the capital of a country and (usually through capital) influence the politics in a country, this is bad. Very bad.
Then there are the problematic values Soros promotes. It's one thing to share what you believe with others and allow them the space to consider your views. It's another to insinuate yourself and your views through a web of NGOs and other organizations.
How about honestly evaluating the situation? People will often criticize Google, Facebook, etc, until they work for them, after which they rationalize.
It really isn't relevant whether you worked for Soros or not. What matters is what's true. If what he's saying is true, then you have to deal with it.
Which is entirely backed up by the history of ultra-nationalist states.
Trivial counterexample: "All bananas are fruit" does not imply "All fruits are bananas".
I don’t agree that treating them as utilities is going to foster innovation. Really? Utilities are examples of innovation? Both Google and Facebook are still highly innovative companies, that’s how they created and consolidated their positions. They key is that the future success of their innovations should be based on merit versus other innovative companies, rather than based on leveraging their current market strength in anticompetitive ways.
This is all really hard to do. There is just as much threat that clumsy regulation will stifle innovation, fossilize market positions and increase costs as there is that lack of regulation will lead to abuses by these companies. It’s good that this issue is being debated, but I don’t think anyone has good answers yet.
It’s funny, I take streaming 4k from Netflix totally for granted but I am genuinely impressed by the way natural gas and fresh drinking water appear in my house as if by magic.
No, the Romans did, through their government. Then it all disappeared until the last century, when governments brought them back.
Remember the 80s when people thought that online services would be provided by information utilities? Imagine if the internet still didn’t exist, and your choice for external connectivity was between AOL and Compuserve. But hey, at least thyou bits and bytes would come gushing into your house right on tap.
Everything about the internet and computer technology is uncharted territory. The most technical human on earth can't predict what will happen even 5 years in the future.
It is safe to predict that Google and Facebook are going to be obsoleted by newer, cheaper, better technology. Google/Facebook operate highly inefficient businesses and that's the weakness that will wipe them both out. No government intervention will be necessary.
Hint: #decentralization
The big internet risk is the last mile, controlled by Comcast/AT&T. We need a campaign to move the whole country to fiber conduit powered by local internet providers.
Any idea how it's going to happen? Historical evidence so far suggests technologies tend to centralize. And it's quite obvious why - centralized systems are generally more efficient in terms of energy use, time and (important for market) money. There's a solid incentive gradient pushing things towards further centralization, and very weak one in the opposite direction. I do not see anything on the horizon that would change it (and no, blockchains don't count for now - if anything, cryptocurrencies are a lesson in just how quickly systems centralize).
Even just an evolved version of this, a ten thousand centralized internet currency marketplace, would constitute a decentralized internet currency system. And this is probably the weakest system that could result.
That may be true, but why does it matter if there's no adoption? As the guy you replied to pointed out, there's no incentive to use a decentralized system for the average user as it's more inefficient and slower by design.
I'm not saying that I'm not interested in decentralized systems, I'm simply arguing that there's no incentive to use them except for a few people whose interest in privacy is very high.
1. The first computers were huge machines that everyone logged into with thin clients
2. Then the PC era where computing became decentralized and all computing took place on a single machine
3. Then the internet, which went back to the thin clients connecting to large central servers
If you believe that the reason for the shift away from decentralization was to enable coordination of multiple PCs so they had access to the same centralized data (for reading or shopping or whatever) then its really not a stretch that distributed consensus algorithms could be a way back to decentralization.
> and no, blockchains don't count for now - if anything, cryptocurrencies are a lesson in just how quickly systems centralize
Not disagreeing with you on the current state, but I believe that is because the people most engaged right now are the same types who day trade penny stocks and options, i.e., low-information high risk seekers. Many of the structures of the cryptocurrency market seem lifted from a student's textbook about how markets can or should work. I see zero discussion of why different structures like open outcry exchanges and centralized regulatory agencies existed originally and what roles they serve now. Maturity, both in the users and the infrastructure, should help this.
I recently had a discussion with a trader-type about why exchanges should exist at all for cryptocurrencies given the volatility cause by a combination of high volume, few market makers, and lots of friction between exchanges. The responses were about price discovery and how would we trade? I don't think they believed me that, as a stock trader, you have almost certainly never traded a stock on an actual exchange and high volatility means its value for economic price discovery is nearly useless.
But please resist the urge to conclude that what is happening in the cryptocurrency markets has any bearing on the potential of distributed consensus algorithms.
Both of those are harder to do with a decentralised system, and it's hard to do proper UX without money to bring engineers and designers together.
I would caution to use that as a motive for these kind of thought experiments
In this case the resource is attention.
Let's hope the long-term effects of extracting attention for a couple decades is limited :)
Then came Radio with it's ads and shows. It was another way to nudge the masses and shape the 'public' opinion. Everyone who had a radio could tune-in.
Television, the moving image! The joy: everyone could watch an endless stream of shows. This was not lost on advertisers ,corporations and propaganda arms of the states.
Now comes FB, Google, Twitter and all these attention hoarding 'services'.
I am not a user of any social medias (not do I condone their use), but how is that different from the previous innovations which allows mass communication? If anything it seems to me that Soros and others might find it decentralizes and weakens their power of media convergence? Would Soros think the same if he had been CEO of FB?
Of course I am sad of seeing so many young people wasting their attention on their illuminated mobile screens, and certainly see the harm in it. But Soros, what is you 'beef' with FB? I doubt that the devolution of humanity makes him loose sleep at night.
"Leyner's world is a Gilderesque dystopia. The passivity and schizoid decay still endure for Leyner in his characters' reception of images and waves of data. The ability to combine them only adds a layer of disorientation: when all experience can be deconstructed and reconfigured, there become simply too many choices. And in the absence of any credible, noncommercial guides for living, the freedom to choose is about as "liberating" as a bad acid trip: each quantum is as good as the next, and the only standard of a particular construct's quality is its weirdness, incongruity, its ability to stand out from a crowd of other image-constructs and wow some Audience."
I found it disturbingly descriptive of today's cultural landscape.
(NOTE: Obviously fiction analysis != analysis of reality, but the essay has some very good points.)
> “The power to shape people’s attention is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few companies” (...) Soros warned of an “even more alarming prospect” on the horizon if data-rich internet companies such as Facebook and Google paired their corporate surveillance systems with state-sponsored surveillance (...) “This may well result in a web of totalitarian control the likes of which not even Aldous Huxley or George Orwell could have imagined. (...) The internet monopolies have neither the will nor the inclination to protect society against the consequences of their actions. That turns them into a menace and it falls to the regulatory authorities to protect society against them”
You're talking about the decentralisation effect of the internet. He is talking about the centralised power of surveillance and influence attained by these companies, so the exact opposite.
But even if we pretend he argued what you imply he's arguing: the printing press gave us protestantism followed by the Thirty Year's war. Nazis partially came to power because they were the first to master mass media propaganda. So yes, the Internet is a menace to society, in the sense that it causes social upheaval and enables good and bad things to happen. Like with the printing press and mass media, we need to figure out as a society how to avoid the bad influences and keep the benefits.
> Would Soros think the same if he had been CEO of FB?
That is an absurd proposition: if George Soros had been CEO of FB, he would be a different person from who he is now. That is like asking "would you think that fast food is unhealthy if you had been the CEO of MacDonald's?" Probably not, but the fact that I believe fast-food is unhealthy is probably one of the reasons that I didn't seek a career at McDonalds in the first place.
One could argue that TCP/IP and web standards like HTTP and HTML similarly made the desktop and its associated software (operating system, productivity suites, etc) less relevant, by increasing the ability of desktop users to access computing resources served by machines running different operating systems (e.g. a Linux server).
Look at Microsoft: their monopoly on the desktop was broken by the rise of mobile, so clearly by market forces. Monopolies just get replaced by other monopolies.
(Also, I don't think governments need to approach this problem by expanding scope of their control; they could use the control they already have. Just break up too big companies, and the next time someone gets this large, break them up too. No need for extra special regulations.)
The only way blockchains can be effective at combating large concentrations of tech power is by cooking the planet, so there's no more technological civilization, and quite probably, also no more humans.
I just can't see why the one technology that has unbounded energy waste problems and is primarily used for get-rich-quick schemes is also seen as a feasible way to solve societal problems.
I see where you're coming from, but cryptocurrencies are not the only use of blockchain.
That's a shame that bitcoin throws such a big shadow over everything else.
If, as you say, there is something worthwhile under the shadow of Bitcoin, I feel it really needs get itself a PR flashlight.
I think people forget how bad the mass media situation was. We had a handful of companies disseminate one way broadcasting to the entire population. The audience were passive viewers whose choices in programming were extremely limited, and who had very little ability to participate in the creation and curation of the media content.
So I don't think it's clear that the market, left to its own devices, doesn't evolve toward the direction of greater personal autonomy and empowerment, and it's certainly not clear that it doesn't have the potential to.
>>Monopoly is a natural end-goal of a company, and it's the usual job of governments to prevent companies from achieving that goal.
Bottom up switch over to open source is a viable market solution to market monopolies. If Android or Linux become the market standard in OSs for example, that is not a proprietary monopoly that gives one group control over the OS.
Good point. Come to think of it, Facebook is a huge improvement over what came before. Some could say that the pre-Facebook blogging era was better, but I don't think those times ever had a chance of growing to encompass regular people. Most of the people who now share their lives on social media wouldn't bother hosting their own blogs. This thought colors my next point:
> Bottom up switch over to open source is a viable market solution to market monopolies.
I don't buy it for the same reason I think Internet-of-blogs wasn't a stable state - it's much easier to take open-source code and turn it into business than it is to take a business and make it open source. Open source, by its nature, avoids attracting money, and money is exactly how you win mindshare. You say, "If Android or Linux become the market standard in OSs for example", but the truth is that the only Android that could become a market standard is the Google Android, and Linux has no chance in hell as long as Microsoft and Apple have money to better tailor (and market) their OSes to end users (regular people and corporations).
If anything, Open source has proven to be primarily successful for building blocks - libraries, frameworks, server operating systems, etc. Basically all the things that are not core to doing business. Sure, some of the things that open source displaced were market niches before - but they were all supporting infrastructure. The only sort-of-exception I can think of here is Google Chrome, but it only reduced Microsoft's monopoly, while enabling Google's monopoly.
Ironically, web browsers are what ultimately killed end-user open source software. With SaaS being the dominant model of software deployment these days, there is no open source. You don't know what code actually runs on third party servers. You can't run it yourself easily (or most commonly, at all). We've completely lost the ability to download, inspect, modify and share most of the software we use, and "in exchange", we also let third parties take our data hostage.
No, this development does not sound like open source being an alternative to market monopolies. In fact, it sounds like the exact opposite.
Agree entirely.
>>the truth is that the only Android that could become a market standard is the Google Android, and Linux has no chance in hell as long as Microsoft and Apple have money to better tailor (and market) their OSes to end users (regular people and corporations).
Well Google Android has a much less entrenched position than Windows did, and it's precisely because it is open source. One can run non-Google Androids that are fully compatible with other Android apps, and Google would never be able to charge for its version for that reason.
>>Open source, by its nature, avoids attracting money, and money is exactly how you win mindshare.
While that's often the case, there are times where its nonproprietary nature facilitates its adoption. The fact that no one group owns an open source project can be an attractive feature, especially when disparate parties are looking for a common protocol or platform to collaborate through.
Cryptocurrency is both open source and attracts money. That's why I think blockchains might succeed against traditional web companies.
All-in-all I think our chances of being to solve the market monopoly problem with technology is good given the space of possible solutions. Of course this is just an opinion and I can't prove that it will work.
A recent Freakonomics Radio show taught me he is a skilled Esperanto speaker. Esperanto enthusiasts generally belong to the more altruist type of people. This might or might not apply to him, but I considered this a sign he probably means well.
Edit: I see he learned it as a child from his father. I guess in that case it says little about his personality.
That's a terrible moral defence.
Let me get this right, your argument is bluntly 'all Esperanto speakers are nice'?
How utterly ridiculous.
Someone who knows more about it should jump in, but as I get it: due to the limited use of the language, a lot of sharing is involved in the community.
Also, learning an almost useless language is hardly a selfish thing to do.
Why do you think this reasoning is ridiculous?
Please, do tell.
We are doomed to become irrelevant, unless we are really special, which is not probable.
Even without an advertising model, we can't go back to a time without curation. People try to game rankings and ratings for other reasons. That means that we can't trust what we see on social and, more importantly, draw any inference from what we don't see.
Society needs avenues of unmediated communication. I don't know what that would look like for social.
See r/rad_decentralization on Reddit.
Some of it might be a trend as we are seeing a lot of books, paid articles about focus, ditching social networks, etc, but I dunno if that is the trend or just a bi-product of the articles in the big media.
So arguments that only existed in say academia or quarterly political journals are now allowed to flow into more “regular” news sources.
Also, it doesn’t help that now Google / Facebook are hated by both the left and the right. Usually you can survive for a while by playing both one side off of another. Very quickly though they got surrounded surrounded on all sides, like the Germans at Stalingrad, and there is no way out, and the vise grows tighter everyday.
https://www.google.se/search?q=infowars+soros (400k+ hits)
Try this with breitbart, glenn beck, fox news, right wing subreddits etc.
Is there any similar counterpart for Kochs and Mercers et al?
https://www.google.com/search?q=koch+political+cartoons&sour...
Have you spent any time on twitter? Have you found a particularly virtuous and polite political camp that doesn't vitriolically attack their opponents?
And mind you, the commenters are mostly not young neo-Nazi holocaust deniers. They are old men and aging ladies, often looking back to the glorious days of communist regime. Also, they don't deny holocaust at all. Rather they regret it wasn't drawn to completion.
I see the same thing with pretty much everything Elon Musk says. He's very rich, so whenever he makes some asinine comment about transportation or AI or tunnel boring every news agency is all over it.